David Brooks: "Winning in Iraq"

I don't usually agree with David Brooks, the Times' editorial staff's token conservative. I think, though, he's hit the nail on the head when it comes to the US's failure to deal with the insurgency in Iraq. Some excerpts from his insightful article:

Andrew Krepinevich is a careful, scholarly man. A graduate of West Point and a retired lieutenant colonel, his book, 'The Army and Vietnam,' is a classic on how to fight counterinsurgency warfare.

Over the past year or so he's been asking his friends and former colleagues in the military a few simple questions: Which of the several known strategies for fighting insurgents are you guys employing in Iraq? What metrics are you using to measure your progress?

The answers have been disturbing. There is no clear strategy. There are no clear metrics.

Krepinevich has now published an essay in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, 'How to Win in Iraq,' in which he proposes a strategy. The article is already a phenomenon among the people running this war, generating discussion in the Pentagon, the C.I.A., the American Embassy in Baghdad and the office of the vice president.

Krepinevich calls the approach the oil-spot strategy. The core insight is that you can't win a war like this by going off on search and destroy missions trying to kill insurgents. There are always more enemy fighters waiting. You end up going back to the same towns again and again, because the insurgents just pop up after you've left and kill anybody who helped you. You alienate civilians, who are the key to success, with your heavy-handed raids.

Instead of trying to kill insurgents, Krepinevich argues, it's more important to protect civilians. You set up safe havens where you can establish good security. Because you don't have enough manpower to do this everywhere at once, you select a few key cities and take control. Then you slowly expand the size of your safe havens, like an oil spot spreading across the pavement.

Once you've secured a town or city, you throw in all the economic and political resources you have to make that place grow. The locals see the benefits of working with you. Your own troops and the folks back home watching on TV can see concrete signs of progress in these newly regenerated neighborhoods. You mix your troops in with indigenous security forces, and through intimate contact with the locals you begin to even out the intelligence advantage that otherwise goes to the insurgents.

If you ask U.S. officials why they haven't adopted this strategy, they say they have. But if that were true the road to the airport in Baghdad wouldn't be a death trap. It would be within the primary oil spot.

The fact is, the U.S. didn't adopt this blindingly obvious strategy because it violates some of the key Rumsfeldian notions about how the U.S. military should operate in the 21st century.

Pat Roberts: "I think the time has come...to take [President Hugo Chavez] out."

Don't mess with those fetuses, hey! But assasination? Well that's sure okely-dokely with God, isn't it, Pat?

On Monday, Robertson said on the Christian Broadcast Network's 'The 700 Club': 'We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability.'

'We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator,' he continued. 'It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.'

Must... fight... rising... bile...

Vitruvian Homer

Now that Season Six is in my collection, this must adorn my walls! Vitruvian Homer at ThinkGeek

An un-update update

It's been some time since I posted, and it occurred to me that some who are following my blog might not be aware that I'm safely back in the States! Obviously quite a bit has taken place since I last posted along the Camino. I'll have something of an update here in the next day or so, I hope, to fill you in. The real meat of my travel stories, though, will be in what I intend to make weekly travelogue posts, probably also submitted to the Litchville Bulletin. More on that next week.

For now - (1) I'm home in Litchville. (2) I won't have my checked bag until Dad arrives here tonight... long story. (3) I have a fridge and freezer loaded with entirely new food... a lightning storm took out my power a week into my pilgrimage, and it had gone overlooked until I arrived home to find all my food gone bad. (4) With Dad's help, the church office is finally going to get painted this weekend, after many months of bare walls - woo-hoo!

That's as much of an update as I have time for right now. Hope it tides you over until I can do some more writing.